Over the course of 40 years, Apple Rubber has grown from a local distributor of O-rings and seals into an internationally-respected manufacturing and research operation.
The Apple Blog recently had a chance to talk with John Tranquili, materials manager at Apple Rubber, about the company’s international expansion. Apple Rubber has averaged an annual growth rate of 13 percent in international sales since 2009 and currently serves clients in over 50 countries around the globe.
“When our company first started, most of our sales were domestic,” he said. “Then, as we started doing more trade shows, we began getting more international inquiries. That snowballed into doing more international shows to support the inquiries.
“It was funny — when the dollar lowered, it became less expensive to source materials in the U.S. compared to sourcing in China or Europe. More and more European companies are now coming to us for product.”
Increased experience in international shipping
As Apple Rubber’s experience with international clients has grown, logistics have become more standardized. Completing orders and getting them to clients – whether in Kenmore or Korea – is an everyday occurrence.
“Through our experiences of our shipping department, we’ve pretty much figured it out,” Tranquili said. “We’re able to have a fairly straightforward shipment to a customer without getting hung up in customs. Many countries have different requirements such as certificates of origin – we can now process these quickly. We know that, for example, Israel has a special document on special paper. We’ve shipped to China, and to Russia, with no issues.”
Getting the scoop — and the business — at international trade shows
In 2014, Apple Rubber will attend trade shows in Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Germany.
“The biggest international show that we go to is called COMPAMED in Dusseldorf, Germany,” Tranquili noted. “It’s an international marketplace for the medical supplier industry — it combines components equipment, devices, and product…
“It’s very international. Since beginning to attend COMPAMED, we’ve had inquiries from Mexico, Turkey, Russia. At the show, we also get feedback into what customers are looking for, what the trends are materials, products, or sizes. If there is a product line that is trending, we can build up tooling to make the mold.”
Apple works with customers in the U.S. to create, design, and prototype, then provide international assemblers with the final product
Customers like working with Apple Rubber at the inception of a project, appreciating the assurance that their parts are the original quality and design.
“We work on design with an in-house engineering team,” Tranquili said. “Say the client is in California, or Boston, and they work with assemblers in China or Mexico. When we ship the parts to their assemblers, they are guaranteed the same product that they started with in the research and development or process validation phase.”
“If assemblers source in their own country, the customers is not guaranteed the same dimensional layouts; there could be warranty issues,” Tranquili continued. “Our parts are very small—they can ship in a box via UPS, and be there in two or three days.”
Commitment to compliance
Apple has a strong commitment to environmental compliance— and that means keeping with complex international and European standards
Apple Rubber’s quality is evident in the number of certifications the company maintains in order to work effectively with clients around the globe. Apple Rubber holds its RoHS compliance certificate, for example, to meet European Union environmental regulations.
“RoHS restrictions are based on hazards – if a substance is hazardous and there are alternatives, then it could be banned,” Tranquili said. “And REACH restrictions (the European Directive dealing with Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and restriction of certain Chemicals) are introduced only if ‘a risk to human health or the environment can be proven, it cannot be controlled and substitutes exist.’ So our materials may not contain certain chemicals. Companies in our field get ongoing requests to certify and recertify that their parts are compliant with new iterations of these international laws.”
Elements like supporting documents, control plans, and statistical measurements regarding the dimensions are all part and parcel of the international shipping game – and Apple Rubber is playing well.